Top 100 Quotes About Detectives
#1. Life's barely long enough to get good at one thing. So be careful what you get good at.
Matthew McConaughey
#2. My strongest hope is for a cameo as a band playing in a club visited by the detectives on 'Law & Order: SVU' during the course of an investigation, maybe during sound check, or something, so they can force us to stop playing while they question the sound guy.
John Darnielle
#3. Honey, what's the Detective doing here?"
"Tag, you never told me Wayne was so funny!"
"Wayne?"
"That's me. Most detectives also have first names.
Jules Cassard
#4. We ran both the courier service and a detective agency from the same office, and had phone apps for both. Basically, we're Uber for parcels and mysteries.
Jay Stringer
#5. A woman went so far as to hire private detectives to contact me to help bring her out of what she called a hypnotic trance.
Charley Pride
#6. Mars and Venus are at it again. This time, Hephaestus is standing by with a private detective, a photographer, and a lawyer.
Mason Cooley
#7. It was Chase who had obtained the information from the girl's boyfriend during a party in an Irish pub, simply by using his British friendliness and charm.
Stefania Mattana
#8. Contrary to popular belief, most detectives couldn't detect a heartbeat on a speed addict, but you never know when you might be up against the next Ellery Queen.
Simon Kernick
#9. To be a good detective you must also think like a crook, an immoral, unethical or unlawful person
Robert Kiyosaki
#10. Her hair was pulled back so severely, it would have won approval from the Spanish Inquisition as a method of torture.
Will Thomas
#11. You can always tell a detective on TV. He never takes his hat off.
Raymond Chandler
#12. Jensen looked concerned.
"I'm reluctant to delay, but would a later appointment be better?"
He glanced over at Vanelli and got an answering 'I told you so' look that I personally wanted to scrape off Vanelli's face with a blowtorch.
Katherine Bayless
#13. When I auditioned with Anthony Minghella (The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency), I loved the audition process, although I hated him for it. Because he had me audition six times for that role. Maybe three hours each. He wanted to see how quickly I could vary.
Jill Scott
#14. The detective's highest talent lay in the gentle art of seeking favours under the guise of conferring them!
Agatha Christie
#15. We split a bottle of Norman cider. Not everybody sells Norman cider by the bottle.
"Has a European feel" Susan said.
"That sounds terrific" I said. "Can I have one?"
Susan grinned at me. "How did you ever get to be so big without growing up?" she said.
"Iron self-control" I said.
Robert B. Parker
#16. I think we take for granted police officers and detectives that walk into some pretty heinous situations, and they really have to be very brave. So I love playing a character that's very brave - someone that kind of dives in the fire to figure out what's happened.
George Eads
#17. Unless your goal is to train your readers to be detectives, only the details necessary to give the reader an idea of the scene should be included.
Kat Duncan
#18. I think TV has been a little bit irresponsible in how they portray these people because homicide detectives are not brooding, tortured souls who are stained with the stink of the city and who have blood on their hands. They are real, live people that are incredibly entertaining.
Nathan Fillion
#19. I included receipts, faxes, newspaper clippings, all sorts of things. I've read novels composed entirely of emails or letters, but not assembled across this kind of mix of materials. I wanted to create the feeling of a detective going through a box of clues.
Brian Pinkerton
#20. Danger is the snack food of a true sleuth.
Mac Barnett
#21. They come upon me all silent and menacing like Pinkerton Detectives, and they flank me - Depression on my left, Loneliness on my right.
Elizabeth Gilbert
#22. I would like it to be said that I was a good writer of detective and thriller stories.
Agatha Christie
#23. There must be some connection between the general nullity of Christie's prose and the tendency of her detectives to take Jewishness as a symptom of crime.
Christopher Hitchens
#24. Personally, I like those mystery shows. Ever since I was a kid I've been crazy about blood and detectives and murder. Maybe I was born with a silver knife in my back.
Jack Paar
#25. You have any suggestions, make them. I'm in charge but humble. No need to salute when you see me."
Fraser said, "Mind if we snicker every once in a while behind your back?"
"Hell, no," I said. "Everyone else does.
Robert B. Parker
#26. I should prefer that you do not mention my name at all in connection with this case, as I choose to be only associated with those crimes which present some difficulty in their solution.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#27. All my instincts are one way, and all the facts are the other, and I much fear that British juries have not yet attained that pitch of intelligence when they will give the preference to my theories over Lestrade's facts.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#28. Something not from earth," Jean Luc said. The setup was too perfect. Misha looked at me, and I sighed, dreading what he would be unable to stop himself from saying next. "Live long and prosper.
A.E. Jones
#30. When I first started writing the books in the 1980s, all of the female detectives were flawed in some way because they were based on noir characters.
Kerry Greenwood
#31. Sarek looked up with something like hope in his eyes. "I must say," he said, "I am impressed. You are quite a detective, Doctor." "All doctors are detectives. All the ones worth their salt, anyway. . . ." "I will get you as much salt as you want, Doctor," Sarek said,
Diane Duane
#32. I was enamored of detectives as a teenager. I liked what they did - piecing things together, thinking about situations. But to get there? Eight to ten years in a patrol car? I didn't have that in me. I didn't want to tell people what to do.
Michael Connelly
#33. A half-dozen or so FBI techies and LAPD homicide detectives were still on the scene. The latest Pearl Jam played from somebody's radio. The lead singer seemed to be in terrible pain.
James Patterson
#34. In detective stories ... I alternately identify myself with the murderer and the huntsman-detective, but ... there are those to which this vicarious outlet is too mild.
Bertrand Russell
#35. Why, he's Hercule Poirot! You know who I mean - the private detective. They say he's done the most wonderful things - just like detectives do in books.
Agatha Christie
#36. What is needed is the imagination of the poet and the reasoning power of the mathematician. The thief of "The Purloined Letter" successfully hides the letter from the police because he is both a poet and a mathematician. Dupin is able to find it because he too meets both conditions.
Vincent Buranelli
#37. Chase rushed after her in pursuit. The woman lost one of her high-heeled shoes and Chase took advantage of her lack of balance to tackle her. They crashed to the ground.
"Why are you running from the ball, Cinderella?" he asked.
Stefania Mattana
#38. At one point during the Holmes investigation Chicago's chief of police told a Tribune reporter he'd just as soon have a squad of reporters under his command as detectives.
Erik Larson
#39. Thank you sir," she said. "I hope that your friend feels better soon."
I shrugged. "The ways of the Lord" I said, "are often dark, but never pleasant.
Robert B. Parker
#40. There's a structure to a detective story that I can easily understand. I understand playing that particular game. It's like solving a puzzle. Or creating a puzzle.
Christopher Bollen
#41. I came to believe that being a private detective was the work I was meant to do.
Shirley Jackson
#42. Professional philosophers are usually only apologists: that is, they are absorbed in defending some vested illusion or some eloquent idea. Like lawyers or detectives, they study the case for which they are retained.
George Santayana
#43. The best crime novels are not about how a detective works on a case; they are about how a case works on a detective.
Michael Connelly
#44. I've always noticed that Old Families, like plumbers and barbers and possibly drummers and detectives, seem to have some kind of reciprocity arrangement in the South. Members of the freemasonry could move anywhere ... and still operate cozily in the local Old Family top drawer.
Celestine Sibley
#45. I've played lots of law enforcement agents, and I do have friends that are in the bureau, in the DEA, and who are detectives and captains.
Malik Yoba
#46. Yes, and many times it's frustrating, because I'm simply part of the show, and I'm not in the creative end of it, who goes out with detectives and tries to find these things out.
Robert Stack
#47. We women have intuition," Barby said loftily. "I wouldn't expect you to understand. I can't imagine why there aren't more women detectives.
John Blaine
#48. I know when I was here prosecuting homicides in the District of Columbia, one of the most effective units here was the cold case squad, which had on it FBI agents, as well as Metropolitan Police Department homicide detectives working together.
Robert Mueller
#49. Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#52. The detectives slide back on the digital timeline to the moment when Mendelssohn steps out into the snowstorm: there is something of the Greek epic about it, the old gray man with his walking stick, venturing out, into the snow, out of frame and away, like an ancient word stepping off a page.
Colum McCann
#53. Look to the past to see what the future holds.
Celia Conrad
#54. I like the idea of playing a historical detective.
Eva Mendes
#55. Truly competent Literary Detectives are as rare as truthful men, Mr. Tweed
you can see her potential as clearly as I can. Frightened of someone stealing your thunder, perhaps?
Jasper Fforde
#56. I think of writers as explorers, not necessarily as detectives. So there is certainly detecting that is going on, but they're explorers.
Walter Mosley
#57. No matter which way you dice it, self-preservation is selfish.
Keith Houghton
#58. With the Great Detective, to think was to act, and to act was to think. Frequently he could do both together.
Stephen Leacock
#59. A lot of the appeal of internal medicine is Sherlockian - solving the case from the clues. We are detectives; we revel in the process of figuring it all out. It's what doctors most love to do.
Lisa Sanders
#60. It is no longer enough simply to solve crimes: We modern private detectives must also be able to come up with catchy names for our cases.
Alan Bradley
#61. I love soap operas - the stories, the plots! And I love the game shows and the courtroom dramas and the detectives - Jessica Fletcher, 'Columbo,' 'Perry Mason,' 'L.A. Law.' Any sense of guilt appeals to me in a television program - a sense of guilt, or a sense of making a lot of money.
Peter Ackroyd
#62. The detectives ransack the place with the passion of soldiers fighting a just war.
Aleksandar Hemon
#63. How about the wrong crowd," I said. "You getting in with them?"
"Not much luck," Paul said. "I'm trying like hell, but the wrong crowd doesn't seem to want me."
"Don't quit," I said. "You want something, you go after it. I was nearly thirty-five before I could get in with wrong crowd.
Robert B. Parker
#64. Bosh. I find a rival - but no, I won't flatter myself that Tecumseh Fox would consider himself a rival of Dol Bonner - I find an eminent detective in your apartment, and that alone is enough, without adding that he is concealed in your bedroom while I am discussing my business with you ...
Rex Stout
#65. Not every oak has to be gnarled, every detective hard-bitten. The adjective that exists solely as a decoration is a self-indulgence for the writer and an obstacle for the reader.
William Zinsser
#66. There was a brown substance inside and Chase had no doubt: it was heroin. Only a tiny amount, but very pure. - Cutting Right to the Chase Vol.2
Stefania Mattana
#67. I see myself as an instrument of justice, not a dispenser of it."
-Detective Thanet.
Dorothy Simpson
#68. I fear that if the matter is beyond humanity, it is certainly beyond me.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#69. These detective series on TV always end at precisely the right moment-after the criminal is arrested and before the court turns him loose.
Robert Orben
#70. You surprise me, Hastings. Do you not know that all celebrated detectives have brothers who would be even more celebrated than they are were it not for constitutional indolence?
Agatha Christie
#71. As the greatest of detectives makes the greatest of criminals, a specialist in investigation is also a specialist in murder.
NisiOisiN
#72. The kind of issues that we face as detectives are similar to what the other married couples out there are facing, or the brother and sister, or the brother and brother are facing. Relationships are universal.
Michael Ealy
#73. As soon as the robbery was discovered, picked detectives hastened off to Liverpool, Glasgow, Havre, Suez, Brindisi, New York, and other ports, inspired by the proffered reward of two thousand pounds, and five per cent.
Jules Verne
#74. Of course the modern detective story puts off its best tricks till the last, but Doyle always put his best tricks first and that's why they're still the best ones.
Rex Stout
#75. What was she doing here? Private detectives were for insecure housewives, parents of troubled teens, bent old ladies who'd forgotten where they parked. She was none of the above. She was a sane, stable, capable adult. Yet here she was.
Desperate times, and all that.
Laura Oliva
#76. I want my job to include a little adventure, a little more of a heightened reality than what I'm actually living. And 'Castle' has that. He gets this opportunity to tail these homicide detectives, and he's driven by that. He's a little immature, but he's obviously loving life.
Nathan Fillion
#77. No, this was Philly. Drunks here boo Santa and get in more trouble than a dog with an Easter basket, and like the dog, they usually end up either sick or dead. Ah yes, another lovely eve in the big city.
Kym Grosso
#78. It is dangerous to engage in even the most innocuous-seeming discourse with the FBI/ Homeland Security/ a local detective.
Ingrid Newkirk
#79. Has anyone ever told you," I said, "that you coalesce reality?"
"No. They only say that I'm good in the sack."
"They are accurate but limited," I said. "And if you give me their names I'll kill them.
Robert B. Parker
#80. I don't think I would ever want to be a writer of detective stories - but I would like to be a detective and there is a large deal of detection in the short story.
Mary Lavin
#81. Personally I had the opportunity to go on several ride alongs with the LA County Sheriff's Department with some amazing detectives, who were invaluable to me.
Nancy McKeon
#82. Yeah. Floyd is his batman."
His what?"
Batman, like in the British army, each officer had a batman, a personal servant."
You spend too much time reading, Spenser. You know more stuff that don't make you money than anybody I know.
Robert B. Parker
#83. How can I take crime shows seriously where the female detectives track killers in Louboutin heels?
Toni Morrison
#84. Literary critics make natural detectives.
A.S. Byatt
#85. After a while I got hungry and went to the kitchen. There was nothing to eat. I drank another beer and looked again, and found half a loaf of whole wheat bread behind the beer in the back of the refrigerator ...
Robert B. Parker
#86. Who am I that I should urge these missionaries to confess their sins in public, when, for all I know, they may be living nearer to God than I am? The Spirit of God does not need me to act as His detective.
Jonathan Goforth
#87. One of the detectives was later heard to comment that Perry Reed was officially in more trouble than any other single human being he'd ever encountered in the course of his entire career....
John Connolly
#88. ...never fully appreciated her before," he told us. "She's strong, like one of these women detectives in books, but kind and compassionate--
Jacqueline Girdner
#89. I have some crack sources - cops who call me, and say, "Hey, there's a dead body in Civic Park, try not to beat the homicide detectives there."
- Gabriella Giovanni, BLESSED ARE THE DEAD
Kristi Belcamino
#90. In the 1970s, there was a trend for all detectives on TV to have some quirk or gimmick, and this was often physical.
Mark Billingham
#91. The instant they say something you don't expect or already know, you should drop into detective mode.
Emmett Shear
#92. The problem facing a comprehender is analogous to the problem that a detective faces when trying to solve a crime. In both cases there is a set of clues.
David Rumelhart
#93. The goal of 'Data Detectives' is to spark the imagination of students around the globe by making them think about new technologies that will impact humanity in ways similar to language and art.
Rick Smolan
#95. She felt the English were themselves to blame for her feelings. They had spent a century relentlessly marketing their detectives and wizards and nannies, and they had to live with the results. Her
Joe Hill
#96. Read like a detective and write like a conscientious investigative reporter.
David Coleman
#97. Have you ever been in jail, mate? Whatever you did in your life, nothing can be compared to a single day in jail.
Stefania Mattana
#98. I confess I prefer to engage with pictures which I've chosen myself out of the welter of unidentified pictures, without the intrusion of too much personal context - Ilike to be a detective, and dislike being an impresario.
Luc Sante
#99. Yesterday's poets are today's detectives. They spend a life sniffing out the hundredth line, wrapping up a case, and limping exhausted into the sunset.
Patti Smith
#100. Mr Benz, the parapet of an Italian bridge doesn't look like the proper place for you, said Chase.
Stefania Mattana
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